Navigating Through the Financial Crisis/kabbalah.info

(Note: This article taken from the Media section of Kabbalah.info, website of the Bnei Baruch Education and Research Institute. Go to kabbalah.info to sign up for free, online, live interactive lessons.)

We are more than a year and a half into the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression and it seems as if the long wished for solution is still far away. As we observe governments struggling to contain this financial crisis by injecting huge amounts of money into the economies of their respective countries, one cannot prevent oneself from asking the simple question: isn’t there another way?

Well, actually there is. But it can be taken only if we’ll allow ourselves to look at things from a different perspective.

First things first: Don’t let the words “sub-prime crisis” mislead you. The sub-prime market is not the reason for the collapse; it is only where the financial crisis surfaced. It could just as easily have been the “environmental crisis” or the “humanitarian crisis,” or even the “nuclear proliferation crisis.” What really started this snowball rolling was not a financial body of any kind, but rather avarice, uncivilized lust and irresponsible opportunism, or simply said, the self-centered nature of humans. The only reason it hit the monetary system first is that this system embodies the corrupt nature of people’s relationships and interconnections.

Unfortunately, this nature cannot be changed by pouring absurd amounts of taxpayers’ money into the markets. So far, the trillions spent in the United States, England, France, and elsewhere have increased neither the lending nor the liquidity. It was all done so recklessly that now no one can get the bailed-out companies and banks to admit what they’ve spent the money on. Those trillions disappeared, just like the billions that slipped through the hands of the big billionaires.

Money didn’t cause the financial crisis and money won’t fix it. To cope with today’s financial and social challenges, a completely different bailout plan is needed – a plan that bails us out of our own self-centered ways.

A Financial Crisis of Trust

Everyone uses the expression, “the stock markets tumbled,” but does anyone even know what this phrase really means? The stock market is, after all, nothing more than a conglomeration of estimations and speculations: a sophisticated platform for successful bets and extrapolations that are immediately translated into rates and indexes. So the stock market is not what collapsed. What really collapsed is the trust between people. Credit companies distrust the insurance companies, which lack confidence in the banks, which were disappointed with the real estate agents, who blame the insurance agents for causing the fall of the average Joe, who was forced, as usual, to pay for all of this… big time! And as if all that isn’t enough, along came ‘Madoff’s Ponzi Scheme‘ and shattered whatever trust we had left in the system.

Now, everyone is carefully holding their cards close to their chests, stashing their money back where it used to be in the good old days – under the floor tiles. This is why the seemingly endless spouting of capital has dried up and created what the self-proclaimed mavens refer to as “a liquidity crisis.”

Now hold tight. Despite all the above-written, all is not lost. Things are actually improving. Why? Because that same trust that appears to be broken was never really there. It was no more than an illusion, which is the real bubble that burst. The situation where everyone is concerned only with personal profits is what brought us to this financial crisis in the first place. Also, if real trust is nowhere to be found in the world, it’s better to discover it now, before it is really too late.

But, this is only the tip of the iceberg. The real bonus that comes with this crisis is that now we are ready to see the world for what it is: one global boat.

Two people were in a boat, and one of them took a drill and began to drill a hole beneath himself. His companion said to him: Why are you doing this? He replied: What concern is it of yours? Am I not drilling under myself? The other replied: But you will flood the boat for us both, and we will both sink. (Kabbalist Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, Midrash Raba, Leviticus 4:6)

In the global boat we all share, whoever thinks he can drill a hole under his or her own seat and ignore the well being of others is gravely mistaken. The brokers and investors who believed that only their clients would be harmed if their gambles failed are now plowing the deep water along with everyone else. And by everyone I mean “everyone,” from the Hypo Real Estate Bank in Berlin and the AIG in New York, to the Chai Ling Shiu and Sons Inc. shoe store in North Thailand. If one person drowns, everyone drowns right along with him.

Why is it so important for us to understand this? It is because we live in a new reality, a reality where we all depend on one another, for better or for worse. From now on, we have no choice but to work together, as one big family. Only then will we be able to navigate our global ship through this winter of our hardship toward the haven of bounty and prosperity.